Feel free
NOT to believe it, but there’s around here another Cyclone. The FOURTH (!!!)
after my arrival.

Yesterday
we tried for some windsurf pictures in a almost-never-surfed reef but we had
to flee because of the harsh rains and the buffeting wind.

And, from
that time, it rained almost without interruption for eighteen hours!

A tropical
downpour, with big fat drops hurtling down from the sky to pierce the ocean
surface.

This night
I had to lower and tie in position the wooden shutters, big like tables, so
to prevent the rain to reach my bed. In the bathroom some leaks dripped
almost musically and continuously directly inside the water closet.

Only this
morning, at dawn, a bruised sun revealed between and behind huge grey clouds.

Almost final considerations after a month in Tonga.

February
it’s NOT the best month to come here, if you’re not interested in wind
sports, like windsurf. In a full month I’ve seen only a couple of days
without wind.

For
spearfishing, the southern island of Tongatapu has almost no organization
for helping you take big blue water fish.

For this,
the best place to try is in Vava’u, where there’re plenty of boats and
skilful captains to help you.

In any
case, again, February is not the right month. The best months for big fish
are July, August and, better still, September and October.

The news
that Blue Water fish can be tackled already have been spread there, by me
and by some few guys just before me, so the road is now open.

A last word
on my next leg.

I’ll leave
for Fiji tomorrow in the afternoon (the check-in is at midnight and the fly
departs at two o’clock in the morning!). I do NOT know if I’ll be able there
to keep so a rapid-pace update of my site. The crushing news are that just
yesterday went broken my brand new Iridium Cellular phone.

So I
lost my personal, independent and dearly paid for connection to the
Internet.

From now on
I’ll be reduced, like all common mortals, to the presence of Internet Points
along the road.

So it’ll be
OK for the emails. For the update of site, instead, I’ll have to find one of
those can let me insert a CD or a USB pen in their precious computers. Not
so common, alas…

See you in
Fiji.

Ah, anyone out there, interested in a beautiful book
on gorgeous Tongan flowers?

The fly is six hours late and so in
Lupepau'u, the Vava’u International Airport, under a wild rain, I’m
just now updating my site.

Yesterday
night, dinner at Ciao Restaurant, just under the magnificent St. Joseph’s Cathedral,
very good pizza and pasta restaurant, owned by Franco, kind and well
travelled, originally from Tuscany (Phone-Fax 71030 – mobile 12474).

Two days
cycling around the island, with a camera on my back, the old faithful GPS
recording every turn I took (and also, unobtrusively, every position of
every picture I took!) and bringing me home even out of the thickest bushes,
a plastic bag to put the camera inside for the frequent, hot, showers from
the sky.

owner also, with Sandra, of the
Backpacker Lodge. I've to thank them here for their kindness and
professionality.

I’m the first wild Blue Water Spearfisher Henk has seen so some
introduction of the fishing technique itself and of the IBSRC association
with which I’ll like to claim a potential record is in order.

After that we leave. The plan is to go out in the west side of the island,
under the high cliffs, so to be out of the harsh winds that even today are
blowing. There, where the current and the wind create a sort of funnel
between the rocks, it’s altogether possible, even if not perhaps probable in
this season, to find a Marlin lurking in the deep waters waiting for some
fish.

The trip out of the harbour
is long, almost one hour, but finally here we are. I’m eager to be in the
water. The blue marlin seen a couple of days before is itching in the back
of my mind.

In the water finally.
Totally, completely alone with the Deep Blue .

As always,
the foremost thought is oneness with the water, dissolving in it any thought.
I dive repeatedly, slowly.

I’ve really
not a clear idea of how much the water is clean. Without bottom under me it’s
always difficult to say. But I keep up the concentration. Every dive I keep
slowly forming in my mind an image of the marlin coalescing from just what
is all around: water. And I’m in peace. All the bustle to be here, the hope
for the fish, the obsessive check of all the gear to be up to the challenge,
all, are surface worries, lost there. Here, in the blue, there’s no space for
them, only the slow thump of my heart and the endless underwater glide.

The trouble
is that sometimes I have to go back to the surface to breath. And there I
found the wind, the agitated surface, and the harsh sounds of all of this.
And, almost disappointing, Henk telling me to move because the birds were
not anymore above my head.

And so I
wander on the Ocean surface, sometimes above it, in the boat, following
those hints of the fish presence the surface itself give away, sometimes,
for blessed minutes, under it.

To no avail.
No marlin ever appeared to match my image of it underwater.

As a last
try I made three drift around one of the FAD, but there were only mahi-mahi
(dolphin fish), a couple of bulls of relatively good size, around 15 kilos.
I was not interested. I didn’t need a kill there and then. And so the day
finished. There’re still Blue Marlin in Vava’u to take.

I can’t just
today book the boat to
go out spearfishing because there has been a tournament and the boat it’s
not free. I’ll dive tomorrow.

Today instead I rented for half a
day a taxi and I roamed the island.

Incredible sightseeing! The
island is utterly different from Tongatapu. Here they have serious hills,
even if they call them mounts, of more that 100 m. The landscape from the
Mt. Talau top (131m) for example is simply breathtaking.

First day in Vava’u, northernmost
island of the Tongan archipelago. The plane, contemplating it in the turf,
is a monument to human hopefulness and faith in its
mechanical abilities. It’s an OLD (1943!!!) Douglas DC 3, that is older than
me and probably it was also part of the Pacific WWII.

The fly itself was uneventful,
IF NOT for the panorama below us! It was what around the world people visualizes
when thinking about South Pacific. Little coral islands of all the
conceivable shades between pale turquoise to indigo blue.

At the airport a fast connection
the my accommodation, Adventure Backpackers Lodge

This
evening arrived the fatal news that Massimo has to leave. By a mixture of
lies, words told but never kept and sheer bullying his bosses reduced his
vacations time from one month, as it was always been, by half. A last
desperate try was meet with scorn. So tomorrow Massimo Scalambretti, by now
fast friends, has to return home.

A REAL,
REAL pity. We had already planned a side trip to Vava’u, the northernmost
island of the archipelago...

The only,
meagre, satisfaction today has been a night dive. I accompanied a couple of
guest of the resort. They were diving with bottles in shallow waters (15 m)
watching soft corals and drowsy fish. I was dancing around them in my
apnea-diving liberty, with long fins and no-weight freedom.